Poland -- Chmielnik Jewish Festival Program

Inside the Chmielnik synagogue, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I put information on this blog's Jewish Culture Festival page, but I don't post the schedules for all Jewish culture festivals I learn about. I thought I would point out the festival in Chmielnik, Poland, however. This year -- June 19-21 -- marks the seventh edition of the festival, which is organized by some enthusiastic local activists in the village of Chmielnik, not far from Krakow.

Before the Holocaust, some 10,000 of the town's then-12,000 residents were Jewish. Today, only 4,000 people live there -- none of them Jews. As the festival's organizer, the local historian Piotr Krawczyk, once put it succinctly: "No Jews here; no people."

Chmielnik synagogue, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

A large synagogue building, which is under sporadic restoration, dominates the town center and is the focus of the festival. It is a large masonry structure with barrel vaulting, originally built in the 1630s. The Nazis turned it into a warehouse, but the interior still retains traces of lovely decoration, including 18th century stucco work and frescoes of lions, geometric forms, and the signs of the zodiac. There are also two Jewish cemeteries -- one has been recently restored, with a monument to the destroyed Jewish community.

This year, the festival takes place in Chmielnik and also in Szydlow, another small village nearby where there is a massive, fortress-style synagogue.

Krawczyk is one of dozens -- scores? hundreds? -- of non-Jewish Poles who have made a mission of recovering and promoting awareness of a past that was destroyed by the Nazis during the Shoah and then suppressed under communism. He has written a book about local Jewish history and spearheaded efforts to restore the synagogue and broaden knowledge of local Jewish history -- which, as he and others have often noted, is actually the history of the town itself.

Time: 13:30 – 16:00 (1:30 – 4:00 pm)In the Synagogue:- Open the exhibition called “I see faces, hear steps” made by Malgorzata Gladyszewska and Andrzej Peczalski.- Theatrical performance made by Elementary and Basic School children from Chmielnik.- The Slawa Przybylska recital, Jan Krzyzanowski recite, Janusz Tylman accompaniment.Time: 16:00 (4:00 pm)On the Chmielnik’s Market – dancing show inspired by the Jewish music made by girls from the Elementary School in Chmielnik.

At the time: 13:00 - 20:00 at the Synagogue on the Sienkiewicza and Wspolna street will be the introductions of handicraft, Jewish food, plastic performances as well as the demonstrations of Jewish art of boiling, illumined the performance of klezmer team called the "Klezmafour".